The Museum Laboratory – Work on the Permanent Exhibition of the Museum of Yugoslavia

The work on the permanent exhibition began in 2009 with the project New Old Museum, which initiated a continuous process of self-reflection and redefining of the mission and the vision of the Museum of Yugoslavia through a series of discussion programs. At the exhibition Yugoslavia from the Beginning until the End, which was opened in 2012, the audience could see selected episodes from the Yugoslav history through the prism of a number of experts from the region. In the following years, the interpretation of different Yugoslav phenomena continued through the exhibitions They never had it better, The Grand Illusion, Design for a New World, To Be a Falcon Is to Be a Yugoslav, Yuga, my Yuga – Gastarbeiter stories and others.

During 2015, the course of work on the permanent exhibition was changed with the turn to the museum fond as a main source for researching the Yugoslav inheritance, i.e. by so-called reading of the objects from the collections. The initial platform entitled We are Opening the Depo was like a scenography for further research. A sample from the collections was displayed, which showed picturesquely the character and the diversity of the objects which were kept in the Museum. In juxtaposition, one across the other, Tito’s memorabilia (gifts and personal objects) and the socialist revolution (according to the collections of the former Museum of the Revolution) are exhibited, as two large, fundamental segments of the Museum’s collections. The rest of the fond is displayed in the last part of the exhibition – with objects collected in the last twenty years, from the establishing of the Museum of (the History of) Yugoslavia in 1996 until today.

The work on the exhibition continued with the transformation of the Open Depo into the Museum Laboratory – an ambience in which the Yugoslav heritage and the very institution of the museum are reflected through multiple interpretations. The museum team aims to involve various associates into this complex process of questioning and creating the inheritance, from researchers and artists to witnesses of the period and interested visitors.

The Origins: The Background for Understanding the Museum of Yugoslavia

Creation of a European type of museum was affected by a number of practices and concepts of collecting, storing and usage of items.

New Mappings of Europe

Museum Laboratory

Starting from the Museum collection as the main source for researching social phenomena and historical moments important for understanding the experience of life in Yugoslavia, the exhibition examines the Yugoslav heritage and the institution of the Museum

A BRIEF FAMILY HISTORY